Event Details

Calafia Zulus Education Board & The Art Exchange Presents:

WILD STYLE movie screening with special Guest Speaker Patti Astor!A Legendary night of Hip Hop History with Patti Astor (one of the stars of the film) giving a history and insight to one of Hip Hops' Most prolific movies and details of her involvement in the explosive art scene in The East Village NYC during the 80's.Where:The Art Exchange (ArtX)356 East 3rd St.Long Beach, CA 90802

This will be an epic of night of Hip Hop culture you not gonna want to miss!

ON PATTI ASTOR...

"Patti Astor was queen of the downtown scene. She arrived in NYC in 1975 with stardom on her mind. In a short time, she was in demand in underground No Wave films and was one of the creative sparks that put the East Village on the cultural map. Her best known role was as Virginia, the roving reporter, in Charles Ahearn's legendary hip-hop epic, Wild Style. Virginia in Wild Style is a white bombshell who encounters the rap and graffiti culture uptown, and introduces it to the downtown art world, a role Patti went on to perform in real life. Patti Astor was sick of the "established" uptown art gallery scene, filled with "white walls, white wine, and white people." She knew many graffiti and hip-hop artists, and understood that like the punk artists playing downtown, the uptown rappers and painters used the city as a backbeat and canvas for their work. When Astor and partner Bill Stalling launched FUN Gallery in 1981, they moved graffiti and hip-hop into a gallery space, bringing uptown sensibilities downtown. FUN Gallery's goal was to be a gallery for artists not buyers. It opened its doors to the people and kids who actually lived in the East Village. Patti Astor wanted art for everyone. FUN was the place artists could show without losing any of their street creds, and so the work of many of the cutting edge artists of the early 1980s--such as Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Dondi, Futura 2000, FAB 5 FREDDY, Lee Quinones, Kenny Sharif, and Lady Pink--could be seen there. It also was known for its terrific parties. FUN Gallery was only around for four years, but in that short time, it was instrumental in opening up the art world to creativity wherever it's found. Patti Astor recently wrote a book about her experiences, FUN Gallery The True Story" -Words by Josephine Reed

ON WILDSTYLE...

"It has been 30 years since Wild Style chronicled the South Bronx's burgeoning hip-hop community, and hip-hop culture is not what it once was. That's not editorializing; it's a fact of the passage of time. And that truth is never more clear than when one watches the vividly realized low-budget film, which essentially acts as looking glass to a hip-hop world we can hardly recognize.

Wild Style crystalized hip-hop's identity at a time when it was tenuous at best, when even those knee-deep in the culture were not characterizing it by name. "No one used the word 'hip-hop,'" writer/director Charlie Ahearn says. "They would say it's an 'MC jam.' The word rap spread as a commercial thing to sell records, but it wasn’t used on the scene."

Wild Style not only validated the existence of that then-nameless community, but per legendary graffiti writer Fab 5 Freddie's vision, the movie illustrated how its players—b-boys, MCs, rhymers, and writers—were not separate entities, but were instead convening to create a culture that could not be ignored. Like a mosaic of tiny images, hip-hop's seemingly disparate elements made the most sense when considered together. It was Ahearn's vision that allowed us that irreplaceable vantage point.

The characters Ahearn strung together, everyone from Busy Bee, Grandmaster Caz, and Lady Pink to the Cold Crush Brothers were ripe with a certain kinetic energy. The rap scene was still simmering, a pot not ready to be pulled from the stove—and Ahearn sensed its great potential. By 1984, "The world had become hip-hop’s world, and vice-versa," Ahearn said." -Words by Shanté Cosme, www.Complex.com